Rep.Diana DeGette, D-Colorado, who will be the lead sponsor of a house bill to expand federally funded research said last week after meeting with the 41 new house Democrats, “to describe them as wildly enthusiasticabout this bill would be an understatement.” House-speaker elect NancyPelosi, D-California, has high priority stamped on the stem cell bill announcing it will be on the agenda for the first 100 hours of the110th congress. The following is what we can look forward to with the human cloning agenda in the US.

Michigan’s governor, Jennifer Granholm and Iowa’s governor-elect, Chet Culver, both democrats, have already announced they would overturn their state’s current bans which prohibit all human cloning.

Iowa’s Human Cloning Prohibition Act,”Prohibits human cloning for any purpose; prohibits transfer or receiptof a cloned human embryo for any purpose, or of any oocyte, humanembryo, fetus, or human somatic cell, for the purpose of human cloning; human cloning punishable as Class C felony; shipping or receiving punishable as aggravated misdemeanor; if violation of the law results in pecuniary gain, then the individual is liable for twice the amount of gross gain; a violation is grounds for revoking licensure or deny ingor revoking certification for a trade or occupation.

And Michigan’s Human Cloning Funding Prohibition Act,”Prohibits human cloning for any purpose and prohibits the use of statefunds for human cloning; establishes civil and criminal penalties.”

With the passage of amendment 2 in Missouri, other states are getting into the human cloning act. States like Florida are in signature gathering mode to get their hyped up research for cures initiatives on the 2008 ballot.

Senator Orrin Hatch states he is also confident he has the support to overturn the sole Bush vetoof last summer—H.R. 810 was a bill that would have expanded federal funding to embryo stem cell research using surplus embryos in fertility clinics, had Bush not vetoed it.

The irony of all of this is that what many of our public servants seek to do iscriminalized in other parts of the world. Proposition 71 (California’scloning stem cell initiative) and Amendment 2, (Missouri’s humancloning legislation) style research, if done in Canada or France would land you in jail. This is the very same research that the UNcalled upon all of their member nations to ban, reject, prohibit—and we seek to advance here in the U.S. This research, which much of the world rejects because it is not compatible with the dignity and protection of human life, because it uses young women as the raw material and because it advances research on the backs of the poor is what we here in America call scientific progress. Go figure.

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